Maroochy 2025 Community Visioning and the Learning Inspired Village Leadership Network: A Partnered Action-Learning Project to Accredit Village Leaders

Singh I¹*, McAlpine R¹* and Gould S²*

1. Education Queensland, Nambour, Queensland, Australia
2. Maroochy Shire Council, Nambour, Queensland, Australia

Reculturing Communities for learning and active citizenship through innovative frameworks that build community capacities and futures orientation is the desired outcome.

The Maroochy Shire Council and the local district education office have recognised the need for a collaborative approach to reculture the community to provide a sustainable and evolutionary model for future communities.

The project is resulting in genuine and meaningful opportunities to work collaboratively with local government, education, health and other stakeholders to determine and build the community future. Between 2003 and 2005 the community developed visions, actions and strategies to create a desired and preferred future. The project was called Maroochy 2025 Community Visioning. Several key strategies are in the area of capacity building and increasing the social capital of Maroochy Shire have been acting as drivers to the partnering projects associated with Education Queensland and Maroochy 2025.

This case study will show how through a Learning Accreditation Framework and the vehicle of the Maroochy 2025 project, a forward thinking model associated with the accreditation of local leadership, learning, decision-making, and foresight was developed and implemented. The presentation will showcase this working model of how the global principles that guide leadership, decision making and foresight can be localised within the community village context to build capacities and social trust.

The creation of modern rituals and artefacts for a new society of the future is a feature of this inspiring story of one community’s journey towards an authentic learning community building capacity and social capital practices.

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